Disarmingly candid

Somewhere between conceptual art and portraiture lie the evocative and often disarming photographs of Kutztown photographer Lydia Panas.

Her subjects seem at once familiar yet somehow disconnected, their eyes watching us as we watch them. They are enigmas that beg for interpretation, with gazes revealing as much -- or as little -- about themselves as those who view them.

In these large prints, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, families and friends speak to us not with words, but by facial expression, body language, and even where they stand within the camera's frame. Arranged in loose groups in a verdant outdoor setting, they openly confront the camera through a narrowly selective depth of field.

Panas' photographs are included in a number of collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Allentown Art Museum and Lehigh University. They have been shown in numerous galleries, as distant as the Shanghai Museum of Fine Art to as close as the Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading, the Payne Gallery at Moravian College and Northampton Community College.

For four years, Panas has installed poster-sized images of people designed to provoke thought in bus shelters throughout the Lehigh Valley. The latest, entitled ''Mona Lisa Smiles,'' featured ethnically diverse women, smiling mysteriously above equally mysterious messages such as ''Can you tell?'' and ''How much does it matter?''

Panas, who earned bachelor's degrees in psychology from Boston College and in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, has taught at numerous art institutions, schools and universities throughout the Lehigh Valley. She has just been announced as one of two recipients of a 2010 Arts Ovation Award for Visual Arts presented by the Allentown Arts Commission.

As enigmatic as Mona Lisa's smile, Panas' work challenges us to define it.

''The theme of this work is about identity through family relationships. But one of the things that's important to me about it is that it's suggestive, not definitive or specific. I'm not interested in defining a person as much as suggesting things like strength, fear, tension, vulnerability,'' Panas says.

Remarkably, some of Panas' portraits capture all four of these emotions simultaneously, as in ''A Suspended Moment,'' an informal group of five subjects harboring a dynamic tension on the cusp of vulnerability and confidence.

Others, such as the three women in ''Family,'' engage the viewer in an emotional showdown, staring at us as if keenly aware of being gazed at themselves.

Panas shot the photographs from 2005 to 2008 on her Kutztown farm, using a large-format 4-x5 view camera.

While most of her subjects are people that she knows, such as family, friends or students, she often asked them to invite other friends or family members to be included. ''That way these people already had a relationship history when they came to me,'' Panas says.

Manipulating the heavy, tripod-mounted camera, then focusing on its ground glass plate under a dark hood before inserting a film holder, makes the photographic process slow and tedious. This has the effect of slowing things down for Panas as well as her subjects, a result she uses to her advantage.

''I'm watching the image under the hood -- it's upside down and backwards, so it's sort of already abstracted. I kind of watch them arrange themselves, to see what happens, to see who takes the lead, who looks at whom, who wants to stand in the back or up front,'' Panas says.

Panas directs her subjects only minimally, asking them to move only so that she can fit them into the frame. ''I try to understand how these individuals interact, then as the shoot goes on I try to connect with something -- it might be totally unconscious, but I'll see them moving and suddenly say 'hold that.' I'd feel it, then I'd shoot it.''

Panas says that a certain amount of the apparent unease of her subjects is the result of the slow process and intimidating equipment.

But that sense of imposed formality also contributes to the success of her images. ''What it helps do is disarm people, so they drop that social mask they tend to put on. The smile that people always want to shoot is really a mask -- it might certainly be inviting, but I'm more interested in who we are without any disguise,'' Panas says.

''I don't think the human condition is about smiling -- that's just one side of it. Hallmark does an excellent job at showing that side, which is fine. But in art you have to go deeper than that. The human condition is much more complex at its core.''